Sunday 31 January 2016

Internet Safety and On-Line Habits

It is amazing to find through my own children how much of their lives are now on-line.  The are both well into their teens and use a variety of social media, streaming services and other on-line facilities.

My eldest has been at the receiving end of unreasonable on-line comments but neither has been the victim of cyber bullying as far as I am aware.  As a headteacher I have had to deal with cyber bullying involving pupils/students of both schools. This has almost always happened out of school hours but it is impossible to draw a line when we do not get involved.

Both my sons spend many hours on-line and often have to be told to turn off gadgets and sleep however I cannot be sure that they do not then go back on-line and I have currently not resorted to time limited router activity. I do have Family filters in place for our home internet service and the school has filters in place for access via the campus. I cannot be guaranteed what the security is with service providers they use elsewhere.

In both schools we can see the fatigue evident in pupils and students who are staying up to late and then are less able to function in school properly. 

A recent Brodetsky 'Pupil Voice' activity highlighted that our pupils are regularly going on-line when their parents are either asleep or downstairs and believe their children are asleep.  The pupils recognise that this makes them tired at school, less able to concentrate and more likely to be told off.

For this reason we are now exploring ways to raise parental awareness of the potential activity their children are involved in, what the risks are (both educationally and socially) and what steps they can take together to improve the quantity and quality of this online access.

To get the ball rolling both schools and The Zone are hosting two workshops offered by the NSPCC and sponsored by O2.  The attached fliers give some of the details and we are hoping that all our families access these.

Both are on 11th February.  The first is at 4pm and the second starts at 5.30pm.  Details are in the 'Events' section of both apps and will be posted on the websites.


Thursday 7 January 2016

When events try and overtake you.

As we start a new year, rich with promise and excitement, I should not have been surprised to find that quickly that life would try and push us off course.

Even before we started back changes to Year 6 SATs (2017) were announced (Times Tables and ipads) even before we have finally seen what the this years SATs would finally look like.

The word homework has proved to be an unexpected can of worms and where to put a Scout Hut continues to prove to be contentious.

The months of rain have started to make their mark with leaks appearing in places we could not have expected including down the inside of electrical cable trunking. (don't worry a speedy call to a great electrician quickly solved that problem).

Addressing the flooding in the BJPS Early Years play area, whilst successful so far, resulted in our bins not being collected. You might ask 'How the two are connected?'. The answer is that when drains contractors, trying to avoid the effort of taking away the debris from drain clearance, choose to put it into the large red wheelie bins we hit waste management rules.  The bin in question was for recycling waste not for soil and sludge and with the wrong refuse in it collection could not happen. If one bin is not emptied no bins will be emptied.

However underlying all this is the fact that our superb pupils, students and staff have clearly come back raring to go and everyone has had a great first week. Time to keep it going now.